Penokee Man
50 miles east of Colby on US24 lies the small town of Penokee. A fascinating but not-easily-seen feature left by natives, the Penokee Man, is a "stick figure" made of rocks, and best appreciated from the air near dawn or dusk. State Hist. Soc Penokee Man page
If driving to the Penokee Man, two sites are of interest on the way.The Cottonwood or Pratt Ranch, run by the Kansas State Historical Society, is a pretty stone ranch where the Englishman Pratt ran sheep and kept meticulous records..... an anthropologist's dream. It is located near Studley, east of Hoxie.
Fort Hays State and National Geographic found a good fossil field near Antelope Creek, east of Studley. They found two quite different types of Oligocene fossils here. They retrieved camel and rhino antecedents, puny by today's standards but large for 10 million years past. They also collected pollen fossils, taken by throwing dirt into standing water and collecting the 'floaters'. When we visited the site one afternoon a work study student proudly showed us her haul for the day -- a light dusting of tiny round fossils that didn't completely cover the bottom of a small plastic pill bottle!